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Lack of access to knowledge main obstacle to innovation, finds Portuguese survey

Some 40% of businesses in Portugal are innovators, according to findings from the fourth Community Innovation Survey (CIS 4). This figure could be increased, businesses say, if more information on technology, markets, and potential partners were readily available to them.
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Some 40% of businesses in Portugal are innovators, according to findings from the fourth Community Innovation Survey (CIS 4). This figure could be increased, businesses say, if more information on technology, markets, and potential partners were readily available to them.
Published by the Portuguese Observatory for Science and Higher Education (OCES), under the guidance of Eurostat, the survey provides an overview of business innovation activities for the period 2002 to 2004. Over this period, it finds that 40% of businesses in Portugal were conducting some kind of innovation activities. This is similar to the results from the third CIS report (CIS3), which showed that between 1998 and 2000, 46% of Portuguese businesses were involved in some kind of innovation activity. At the time, Portugal was just above the EU average.
In the latest survey, these businesses spent a total of €2.8 billion on their innovation activities, just 2% of their overall turnover. In CIS 3, the EU average was 3%. A total of 70% of that amount was allocated to the acquisition of machinery, equipment and software, while 24% went to research and development (R&D) activities.
According to the survey, the highest proportion of innovation occurred in the R&D services - 100% of companies are active in this domain. Next came post and telecommunications (78%), computer and related activities (75%) and technical testing and analysis (74%). In terms of their geographical spread, the majority, some 44-46% of innovation companies, was found to be active in the centre of Portugal and around the capital, Lisbon.
Only one out of 10 companies benefited from some kind of public support for innovation. These tended to be mainly companies with 250 or more employees (40%) rather than smaller sized establishments. Slight preference was also given to companies in the industrial sector as opposed to the services sector.
Asked to indicate where companies got information to help with their innovation ideas, 29% reported having found other companies working in the same sector 'highly important'. A total of 18% companies found institutional sources, such as the government or public research institutes as well as universities, were very helpful. Only 8% considered resources within the companies themselves as important sources of information.
As for the factors standing in the way of innovation, most companies said that there was a definite lack of information on technology, on the markets available to them, as well as a lack of qualified personnel. Companies also underlined the difficulty in finding partners with which to cooperate.
Details of all the country reports in CIS 4 will be published as of the end of November.